Unwinding the Sea: notes on H.D. Jennings's translation of O ...

Unwinding the Sea: notes on H.D. Jennings’s translation of O Marinheiro

Nicolás Barbosa López*

Keywords

Fernando Pessoa, Translation, The Sailor, The Watchers, H. D. Jennings, static theater. Abstract

H. D. Jennings—who taught at Durban High School after Fernando Pessoa had studied there—began an English translation of O Marinheiro, the drama that Pessoa published in 1915. Jennings was apparently unaware of the fact that the Portuguese writer had already started the same project; Pessoa, in fact, left loose evidence among the thousands of pages in his archive of an incomplete and fragmented English translation. This article analyzes the way in which Jennings’s version changes some of the most crucial notions of the play: the title, certain grammatical constructions, and, in consequence, a series of concepts implied behind the storyline and its mise-‐‑en-‐‑scène.

Palavras-‐‑chave

Fernando Pessoa, Tradução, O Marinheiro, veladoras, H. D. Jennings, teatro estático. Resumo

H. D. Jennings – que trabalhou na Durban High School depois de Fernando Pessoa lá ter estudado – começou uma tradução para o inglês de “O Marinheiro”, a peça de teatro que Pessoa publicou em 1915. Aparentemente, Jennings não sabia que o escritor português tinha começado o mesmo projeto; de fato, entre os milhares de páginas do seu espólio, Pessoa deixou evidência de uma tradução incompleta e fragmentária para o inglês. Este artigo analisa como a versão de Jennings muda algumas das noções mais essenciais da peça: o título, algumas construções gramaticais e, em consequência, uma série de conceitos determinados pelo argumento e a encenação.

* Universidad de los Andes.

López Unwinding the Sea

Pessoa Plural: 8 (O./Fall 2015) 92

In 1915, Fernando Pessoa published O Marinheiro, a play on which he had allegedly been working since 1913 and which, according to other manuscripts and records, he continued rewriting and editing for decades. This text is also part of an ambitious translation project in which Pessoa envisioned a trilingual play in Portuguese, French, and English. However, he never managed to finish a draft of the last two, and all that he left, unsurprisingly, were translated fragments. H. D. Jennings—who taught at Durban High School after Pessoa had studied there—began an English translation, apparently unaware of the fact that the Portuguese writer had already started the same project and had left loose evidence of it among the thousands of pages in his archive. Pessoa’s attempted English translation is brief and fragmented, especially when compared to the twenty-‐‑five pages of his French translations1, but they correspond to three crucial moments of the story. The play takes place in a castle, where three women talk to each other while watching a deceased fourth woman who is lying on her casket. They begin to talk about life, imagination, and reality, and one of them narrates a dream she had about a sailor, a man who begins to dream of an imaginary past until he is unable to distinguish reality from fiction. Pessoa’s English translation includes the beginning of the play, the dialogue prior to the appearance of the sailor, and a part of the dream about him. Jennings’s version, on the other hand, is a continuous translation that stops right in the middle of the climax: the scene in which one of the women narrates her dream about the sailor. Based on this material—Jennings’s partial translation and Pessoa’s even shorter one—I will analyze the implications of Jennings’s most significant choices and variations: the title, the grammar, and the reinterpretation of essential Pessoan lexica. While these modifications are in some cases openly deliberate and presumably inadvertent in others, the consequences of these choices are impactful, due to their metaphorical potential and the effect they have on certain themes that prevail in the analysis of this play and in Pessoa’s writings in general.

The theater of Fernando Pessoa, like much of his writings in other genres, unveils a disruption of the surrounding reality, a compulsion that the Portuguese poet has come to be known for among critics and readers. And, true to his literary tendency toward self-‐‑sufficiency, which is best manifested in his plastic world of fictitious authors and relationships, Pessoa proposed a new philosophy of theater while destroying the previously established rules of drama. In doing so, he created a new type of genre that he labeled teatro estático (static theater). Self-‐‑sufficient, yet also problematically fragile, this genre threatens the viability of theater itself with scripts that seem to be made in a way that could never be performed.

1 These are not continuous or unified texts. Among the manuscripts of French translations, for instance, there are up to six variations of the initial scene in O Marinheiro.



One of the most revealing attributes of this new form of theater—devoid of action, movement, and conflicts—is precisely its mise-‐‑en-‐‑scène. Given that O Marinheiro stands as Pessoa’s single finished and published play within the static theater project, it is this work what will allow us to explore the author’s notion of drama and the effects of Jennings’s choices. Let us examine the opening lines of O Marinheiro, a stage direction for this static drama-‐‑in-‐‑one-‐‑scene:

Um quarto que é sem duvida num castello antigo. Do quarto vê-‐‑se que é circular.

Ao centro erge-‐‑se, sobre uma eça, um caixão com uma donzella, de branco. Quatro tochas aos cantos. Á direita, quasi em frente a quem imagina o quarto, ha uma única janella, alta e estreita, dando para onde só se vê, entre dois montes longinquos, um pequeno espaço de mar.

Do lado da janella velam trez donzellas. A primeira está sentada em frente á janella, de costas contra a tocha de cima da direita. As outras duas estão sentadas uma de cada lado da janella. É noite e ha como que um resto vago de luar.

(PESSOA, 2015: 41)2

[“O Marinheiro,” in Orpheu, n.º 1, p. 29, 1915; Casa Fernando Pessoa MC/RES 82.1; detail]

The round stage is the basis of the story and its mise-‐‑en-‐‑scène. It is because

of this circle that O Marinheiro begins to drift away from theater tradition, with a theater-‐‑in-‐‑the-‐‑round that seems to be replacing the proscenium-‐‑type stage and that immediately encloses the characters within a perfect circle, thereby leaving any potential audience in a spatial limbo: either nonexistent, outside the walls and unable to watch the plot, or somehow meant to be inside the circle. The geometrical relationship between points on the circumference and the lines in this round layout becomes crucial for the visual setup of the stage and the development of the story. Our first character lies in the center, while three other women sit on the circumference, forming three unstated radii. The fifth character 2 Jennings’s English translation of this same fragment is transcribed further on.



(the man) emerges only near the end of the story, yet his entrance remains exclusively nominal. Therefore, we are aware of the existence of this extra variable, the fifth point, but we are unable to place it on, inside, or outside the circle.

[The mise-‐‑en-‐‑scène of O Marinheiro.]

The shape of this theater provokes an ever-‐‑changing vantage point. As a

“polygon” of infinite sides, the circle destroys the four walls of the traditional stage and becomes an impossible space of infinite walls and vantage points. As in every circle, no initial or end points can be traced in this castle tower. Moreover, the actions of the man in the title, who seems to be the most prominent character of the story, do not even seem to be occurring inside this space, but rather far away from it. Hence, the title becomes especially relevant precisely due to the lack of correspondence between the character it references and the spatial



dynamic of the stage, where actions do not take place but rather potentially happen somewhere else. In Pessoa’s convoluted version of theater, the mise-‐‑en-‐‑scène seems to have no purpose at all, since it is not where the audience’s gaze must aim – should there ever be an audience.

The distinction between perspective and target fades. The eponymous sailor represents an exact and, at the same time, untraceable point. His importance rises above that of the other characters, all of whom are excluded from the title, but they are the ones who are present on stage instead of him. And in lieu of supporting characters, the watchers become ubiquitous. Contrary to what the title alone would imply, the central character—paradoxically nowhere to be found, let alone in the center of the stage—unfolds through the dialogue of the purportedly tangential characters, who remain permanently in the center. Thus, the logic of vantage points is destroyed: the should-‐‑be center is absent and replaced by a substitute center (the enigmatic character about whom we only know that she has ceased to exist). Tangent lines become the circumference itself, and we witness the oxymoron of a displaced center. This absurd construction of vantage points is best manifested in one of the most pivotal questions raised throughout the plot: when the watcher who is narrating the story of the sailor in her dream asks herself whether it is not he who is dreaming of them. As the stage’s visual perspective gets lost, reality is nowhere to be found either.

Jennings’s decision to change the title of the play from O Marinheiro to The Watchers adds another level of vantage point disruption. It is most likely an overt deviation (and by “deviation” I mean a deflected vantage point instead of a modified storyline) from the original text, rather than the result of difficulties in the translation. Ruling out the latter as a possible reason for his decision may seem obvious, at first, yet the Portuguese title may contain certain connotations that could get lost in an exact and orthodox English translation.

Out of the handful of possible translations for marinheiro, “mariner” and “sailor” are perhaps the two most fitting words, the former for its morphological proximity to the original word, and the latter for being the most widespread word used to communicate this meaning among modern English speakers (Corpus of Contemporary American English3). Few objections may be raised against “mariner” other than a potential geographical and chronological detachment from modern English. First registered in the thirteenth century, the Anglo-‐‑French “mariner” was derived from the Old French marinier used one century before, which in turn came from the Medieval Latin marinarius and the Latin marinus (HARPER).

3 The online Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) of Brigham Young University (http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/) shows that while “sailor” ranks 5,081st on the frequency list that averages word occurrences in spoken English, fiction, magazines, newspapers, and academic articles, the word “mariner” ranks on the 23,019th spot.



On the other hand, “sailor” comes from sailer, which was first registered in the fifteenth century as the agent noun of “sail”. The spelling changed one century later and incorporated the o as a way to distinguish the meaning of “a man who sails” from “a thing that sails” through the –or suffix. Thus, “sailor” came to replace the older terms “mariner,” “seaman,” and merefara (Old English for “mariner”) and, according to written evidence, it became even more ubiquitous during the nineteenth century (HARPER). Long more common and earlier than “sailor,” “mariner” acquired more of a learned word status. And, as expected, “mariner” is etymologically closer to the original word than “sailor.” The latter does not contain the root for “sea,” whereas “mar” is present both in the Portuguese marinheiro and the English “mariner.”

The question then becomes whether Jennings’s decision to use “the watchers” and not “the sailor” as the story’s title could have possibly accomplished a less intrusive translation when compared to the original concept; in other words, whether the variations between veladoras and “watchers” are less disruptive than the variations between marinheiro and either “mariner” or “sailor.” The noun veladora comes from velar, a verb that is broader in meaning than “mariner” or “sailor” and, therefore, richer in its metaphorical potential. Velar simultaneously implies the act of keeping guard, assisting a sick or dead person, spending the night, observing something attentively, avoiding sleep, working for extended hours, and keeping a light on. If we go further back and analyze the word vigília, introduced as a learned word or Latinism in Portuguese, we unearth an even more revealing nuance in this family of words: in Latin it was used to refer to the sentinels that observed the sea from a watchtower. Therefore, there are three important semantic notions implied by the word velador: observation, absence of sleep, and the sea.

Let us take a look at the associations one may find in the word “watcher.” Observation is perhaps the most self-‐‑evident notion implied by the word. More technical meanings lead us toward the act of keeping watch, that is, staying awake for safekeeping, and “watch” as the nautical term for a period of time in which a ship’s crew is on duty. One could argue that the original veladoras and the English “watchers” seem to have more correspondences (though some of them perhaps slight and tangential) than marinheiro and “sailor.”

Accepting the fact that “watchers” maintains the most important connotations of its Portuguese counterpart, thus keeping a rigorous translated title, does not conceal the fact that Jennings’s version prolongs the displacement of vantage points. This new title offers a different irony, which is not a call to a character we never see, but rather a call to a group of characters we permanently see despite the fact that they do not see us—or, for that matter, anything outside their circle. The original title initially places the reader at an undetermined spot—that futile attempt to visually locate the sailor—making it impossible for us to



trace a continuous line of sight due to the lack of a starting point. In the meantime, Jennings’s title provides us with the opposite situation. The starting point becomes the people inside the room, but our line of sight gets strayed as soon as it goes beyond the window. In fact, the search for the sailor represents none other than an impossible line of sight, one with no course, projection, or endpoint and, therefore, nothing more than an endless circle we are unable to abandon.

Jennings’s decision ultimately raises a question about language and reality by making a distinction between different levels of invisibility. The sailor, already unseen, now enters a new level of invisibility: he becomes the tacit subject of discourse. While Pessoa’s sailor stands as the subject enclosing the entirety of this universe, Jennings’s twist inverts the center and the circumference, eroding the sailor’s status as linguistic subject. Now, it is not only impossible to see him, but also to name him, and his existence is only a possibility that comes from the mouths of characters that are not positively real. If the certainty of the sailor’s existence is originally leveraged by his inclusion in the world behind the scenes of the drama – specifically, the world of its conceiver, the playwright – Jennings’s version isolates him even more, raising a question about his nameability.

In O Marinheiro, the sailor dreams of a past and a homeland he has never had, until it reaches the point where he is unable to remember his true life. Meanwhile, his creation becomes his own reality and, like a god, his own origin becomes the deepest of all enigmas. The sailor emerges as a metaphor for what one could argue is among the most sophisticated irrationalities in humans: knowing we come from an origin, but being incapable of elucidating it; in other words, claiming god as our origin, but being unable to reconcile the paradox that this god is the result of a prior cause, hence no longer an origin. This eternally elusive source is manifested in the godlike character of the sailor. Therefore, it is relevant that Jennings chooses to ostracize this godlike (and already exiled) man, making him an unpronounceable and even more imageless abstraction. By burying the mundane and man-‐‑made words that define him, Jennings enhances his otherworldliness.

It is worth reproducing the initial stage directions, as translated by Jennings, in order to point out two revealing aspects:

A room in an old house. The walls can be seen to be rounded. In the centre, on a catafalque, is a coffin with a young woman in white. Four great candles in the corners. On the right, almost in front of what we imagine the room to be, there is a single window, high and narrow, from which there can be seen <two distant mountains> between two distant mountains, a narrow strip of sea.

Beside the window, three young ladies keep vigil. The first is seated in front of the window her back against the candle above her on the right. The other two are seated on either side of the window.

It is night, and there is, as it were, a vague remainder of moonlight.



[Initial fragment of Jennings’s translation of O Marinheiro, p.1; Jennings archive]

In the first sentence, Jennings omits the phrase sem duvida in what should

have been translated as “a room undoubtedly in an old castle,” for instance. Leaving the inaccuracy of choosing “house” instead of “castle” aside, Jennings’s omission is problematic only when compared to the original. There should not be any doubts raised about what is being expressed by the phrase alone, “A room in an old house.” Yet, when compared to the Portuguese “Um quarto que é sem duvida num castello antigo,” one cannot help but wonder if Jennings’s version could imply the exact opposite: precisely that “with some doubt” such is the real location of the room. Although Pessoa’s clarification turns out to be a blatant lie, since by the end of the story we do doubt the room’s existence, Jennings’s omission is also a lie but in a different disguise. He strips the opening line of any verbs—truthful to this theater of no action—and the lie becomes more difficult to trace. There is technically no assertion of any action and, instead, we find a grammatically incomplete sentence that does not enclose a conclusive idea but rather an unfinished one. Unlike Pessoa’s description, Jennings’s initial lie seems to follow the same criteria behind his version of the sailor: images are built on words that remain unwritten, and these cannot be rebutted precisely because they were never said.

In the introduction, and in virtually the entire translation, Jennings maintains Pessoa’s circuitous syntax and translates sentences using the same periphrastic style full of compound sentences, commas, inserts after inserts, and ideas inside ideas—which never seems to be gratuitous in the original text, but rather a formalistic decision that mirrors the dream-‐‑within-‐‑a-‐‑dream structure of the storyline. It is worth noting that staying true to Pessoa’s sporadically convoluted syntax seems to be more complex to accomplish in English than in a Romance language. Although English allows the use of certain expletives and deictic structures, such as the always-‐‑reiterative Gallicized phrases that abound in Pessoa’s writing, these patterns are less frequent and more difficult to



incorporate in the more rigid structure of English’s subject-‐‑predicate arrangement.

For example, let us compare the following sentences of Jennings’s translation with the original Portuguese: “It is only in other lands that the sea is beautiful. That which we see always gives us longings for the one we shall never see.” (“Só o mar das outras terras é que é bello. Aquelle que nós vemos dá-‐‑nos sempre saudades d’aquelle que não veremos nunca…” [PESSOA, 2015: 42]); “It is mountains that I am afraid of.” (“Dos montes é que eu tenho medo” [PESSOA: 43]); and “What I was before I can’t remember now.” (“O que eu era outr’ora já não se lembra de quem sou” [PESSOA: 44]). In fact, in the last example, Jennings changes the real sense of the sentence (“I can’t remember what I was” instead of “what I was cannot remember what I am”) and, in turn, creates a distorted complement-‐‑subject structure that does not exist in the original text. But, overall, Jennings’s urge to mirror Pessoa’s syntax reveals a consciousness of linguistic inversion and circularity as a means to build a universe of intricate vantage points.

In other cases, however, Jennings changes relevant grammatical aspects, such as personal and possessive pronouns, which are significant not only because they have critical implications, but also because they are different from Pessoa’s own English translation of some passages. One of the most emblematic examples is found in the beginning of the drama, shortly after the introduction. It is a fragment that Pessoa translated (possibly in 1917), subsequently located by Richard Zenith and published in El marinero (2015) and by Claudia J. Fischer in Pessoa Plural: 1 (Spring 2012). Let us read the Portuguese and the two English versions:

Pessoa’s Portuguese version:

[“O Marinheiro,” in Orpheu, n.º 1, p. 29, 1915. Casa Fernando Pessoa MC/RES 82.1; detail]

Primeira veladora. – Ainda não deu hora nenhuma. Segunda. – Não se podia ouvir. Não ha relogio aqui perto. Dentro em pouco deve ser dia.

Pessoa’s English version:

[BNP/E3, 90-‐‑2-‐‑41v; detail]



1 – <No> The clock has not struck yet. 2 – One could not hear. There is no clock It must soon be day.

Jennings’s English version:

[Initial dialogue of Jennings’s translation of O Marinheiro, p. 1; detail]

FIRST WATCHER – We haven’t heard the time yet. SECOND – We wouldn’t be able to hear it. There is no clock near here. Before long it should be light.

Jennings insists on personalizing the first two sentences, although Pessoa’s Portuguese and English versions have impersonal constructions. The subject of the first sentence is tacit in Portuguese, while in English it is an object (the clock). As for the second watcher’s line, it remains impersonal in both cases, with an impersonal subject in Portuguese, and the undetermined gender-‐‑neutral “one” in English. Yet, in the lines of the first and second watcher, Jennings changes the subject and inserts “we” with reference to the watchers. So, in Jennings’s Marinheiro, not only do we find a different title, but also a story that literally begins with a straightforward appeal to the self. In Jennings’s version, the two actions that are mentioned (not hearing the time and not being able to hear it) are a direct result of the watchers themselves, a notion that is not present in Pessoa’s versions. Jennings’s initial stress on the active voice (both grammatical and metaphorical) deepens the story’s contradiction: the watchers’ alleged autonomy in their actions soon proves to be false.

Albeit rich in paradoxical meaning and therefore true to the spirit of Pessoa and this drama, Jennings’s decision to relinquish the sentence’s impersonal subject by using “we” instead of “one” ignores a deeper level of irony that pervades Pessoa’s writings: a cunning use of pronouns as a formalistic expression of heteronymism4. Subject-‐‑verb disagreement comes as a typically Pessoan attribute, and the link between this person-‐‑number disorder and the singleness-‐‑plurality relationship in his heteronyms does not seem to be arbitrary.

4 Heteronymism—the author’s depersonalization into fictitious authors with lives and literary styles of their own—makes Pessoa’s use of pronouns a pertinent field of study, due to a likely correspondence with his philosophy of plurality. As shown by Jerónimo Pizarro and Patricio Ferrari in Eu Sou Uma Antologia, published by Tinta-‐‑da-‐‑China in 2013, Pessoa created 136 fictitious authors.



Many critics 5 have regarded the watchers as an early expression of heteronymism, as characters that seem to melt into one another (they rarely finish an idea individually) despite their distinctive, yet impersonal identities. Pessoa’s own translation maintains his ironic use of grammar: “one,” as the most basic meaning of singleness and unity, is precisely the pronoun used in English to express an impersonal notion of a collective and undetermined subject. Thus, it is unsurprisingly Pessoa’s best choice when it comes to encompassing the paradoxical spirit of the watchers and the oxymoron of their singular collectivity.

At some points, Jennings himself gets entangled amidst this plurality-‐‑individuality confusion, yet in other cases he seems to be well aware of this whirlwind of pronouns and possessive adjectives. He is oblivious to some slips, like writing “stretched on my back on the beach” instead of “his back”, according to the original: “Cada hora elle (…) estendido na praia, de costas” (PESSOA, 2015: 45). He corrects some others, and at the same time he intriguingly decides not to cross out every blunder, as in the sentence: “Weren’t we [→Weren’t you] going to say what we were,” whereas the original says: “Não nos ieis dizer quem ereis?” (PESSOA, 2015: 44).

Semantically, Jennings’s translation is full of divergences. As if parodying Pessoa himself, Jennings reinvents lexical boundaries and reinterprets concepts that are key to the story. There are several variations of terms, but we will focus on those associated to three of the most important themes throughout the story: falsehood, the soul, and the act of watching. These are essential ideas that appear repeatedly, and, although Pessoa maintains a lexical uniformity, Jennings does not adhere to a single term.

Jennings swings between the words “false” and “wrong” whenever the original text says falso, as in the following examples: “É bello e é sempre falso” is translated as “It’s beautiful and always wrong,” and “É um modo tão falso de nos esquecermos!” (PESSOA, 2015: 41) as “It’s the wrong way to forget ourselves.” But then he translates “Não é inteiramente falso, porque sem duvida nada é inteiramente falso.” (PESSOA: 45) as “It is not entirely false because doubtless nothing is entirely false…” It is not clear why Jennings would have ruled out the cognate in the first two cases, even more so in exchange for a word with a moral

5 David Jackson suggests that O Marinheiro is Pessoa’s foundational seed, since it introduces themes that would be explored afterwards, such as the voyage, dreams, stillness, and absence, as well as a burgeoning idea of depersonalization. See Jackson, K. David (2010). “Waiting for the Ancient Mariner: A Theater of Immanence”, Adverse Genres in Fernando Pessoa Oxford: Oxford University Press, pg. 37-‐‑59. In turn, Luiz Henrique Barbosa and Raimunda Alvim Lopes Bessa suggest that the watchers of O Marinheiro are a metaphor of language as an entity built collectively and not individually, an idea that precedes the definition of heteronyms. See Barbosa, Henrique Luiz and Bessa, Raimunda Alvim Lopes (2007). “O Marinheiro: Um Drama Pós-‐‑moderno?”, Fernando Pessoa e o Surgimento do Sujeito Literário. Organized by Lélia Parreira Duarte. Belo Horizonte: Cadernos Cespuc de Pesquisa, pg. 144-‐‑158.



nuance that is not necessarily implied in “false.” Similar hesitations are seen in the array of words he uses to translate the term espreitar, which in Portuguese can range from “contemplate” to “observe without being seen”. In fact, Jennings is well aware of the word’s broadness and vacillates in certain fragments, such as: “I lived among rocks and watched [→peeped at] the sea.” Later on, he even introduces a third term with the same meaning: “Life is peering at us all the time.”

The previous decisions are significant because they are concepts that are reiterated throughout this drama and Pessoa’s writings. The concept of falsehood versus truth pervades most of Pessoa’s work, so Jennings’s decision to introduce a slight change in meaning (by not establishing the same opposition but rather a dichotomy between correct versus wrong) is not entirely accurate. Nonetheless, it is still in line with a concern we have seen in other Pessoan texts such as “O Banqueiro Anarchista”: the supposed disjunction between nature (i.e. truth) and human correctness. The variations of watching, peeping, and peering are also significant, because Jennings’s initial preference for the term “to watch,” as seen in the first example, could have been associated with his version of the title. It could also manifest the ambivalence—and, in turn, the falsehood—of the chosen title: surrounded by thick castle brick, these so-‐‑called “watchers” have barely anything to look through besides a single, narrow window. Hence, what they are and how they seem to relate to the life that is happening outside their tower seems to be closer to Jennings’s legitimate hesitation. These watchers are not able to actually watch; instead, they can merely aspire to peer through their window and their pretend lives.

This leads us to the final case of lexical uncertainty, which seems to be a consequence of the ambiguous words used to identify the three women: the terms used when referring to their souls. The Portuguese alma has four different translations throughout Jennings’s text—“soul,” “inside,” “spirit,” and “heart”—as seen in the following examples (variations are shown in italics): “There are waves in my soul.”; “I spend Decembers inside me.”; “This warm air is cold inside, in that part that ouches the spirit.”; and “Merely to think of hearing you touches music in my heart.” This multiple interpretation of the soul has, in turn, various effects. On one hand, it makes a nebulous concept even more imprecise; on the other, it provides the idea with a materiality it does not originally have. Especially when choosing the words “inside” and “heart” (which can be effortlessly used both in physical and metaphysical contexts), the concept of soul gets lost halfway between two worlds. Perhaps Jennings’s uneasy translation of “soul” suggests how ill-‐‑defined the concept is, and how all attempts to encompass it within one word are fruitless. All in all, it does point out the dubious existence of the watchers, who, unable to distinguish between their souls



and hearts, become more prone to ignore the limit between their ethereality and earthliness, between reality and dreams, and ultimately, between life and death.

Through his profusion of variations, Jennings builds a translation of masked layers and offers a spirited text that seems to be well aware of he who is being translated: the ultimate master of masks. Jennings’s version does grow apart from Pessoa’s, but it also seems to treat language with a careful Pessoan awareness. It must also be noted that although Jennings’s translation shows evidence of multiple readings and proofreadings, there is nothing that allows us to consider it a final one. In fact, Jennings’s decisions to maintain more than one option in some cases of hesitancy, and to offer a text with other potential texts inside, is perhaps the ultimate Pessoan attribute of his translation. Thus, at the very least, this incomplete text is a faithful translation in the sense that it leaves the watchers’ circumference unenclosed, and, although it alters our vantage points, it does not fully destroy the line drawn on the stage: a circle that will never become a full circle, because it meets a narrow—but infinite—window that faces the sea.

Bibliography Corpus of Contemporary American English. 10 Oct. 2015. <http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/>. FISCHER, Claudia J. (2012). “Auto-‐‑tradução e Experimentação Interlinguística na Génese d’‘O

Marinheiro’ de Fernando Pessoa,” in Pessoa Plural, A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies, n.o 1. Providence; Warwick; Bogotá: Brown University, Warwick University, Universidad de los Andes, pp. 1-‐‑69.

HARPER, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary. <http://www.etymonline.com>. (Oct. 10, 2015). PESSOA, Fernando (2015). El Marinero. Ed. Nicolás Barbosa López. Medellín: Tragaluz. ____ (1915). “O Marinheiro,” in Orpheu, Revista Trimestral de Literatura. Vol. I (Jan-‐‑Mar). Lisbon:

Livraria Brazileira de Monteiro & Cª.



Annexes I. Unpublished. Undated. Seven pages of The Watchers, a partial English translation by Hubert Jennings of O Marinheiro, written in Portuguese by Fernando Pessoa and published in Orpheu 1 (Lisbon: Monteiro & Cª, 1915). The sides of the papers with the translation are facsimiled below; the other sides contain parts of the following unpublished essays by Jennings: “Ourselves, Schizophrenia, and the Poets”; “Fernando Pessoa | What a Portuguese Poet Can Mean to Us as South Africans.”; “Fernando Pessoa—And Us.”; “Fernando Pessoa | What Portuguese Poet Can Mean for Us.”



THE WATCHERS.6

[1]7 A room in an old house. The walls can be seen to be rounded. In the centre, on a catafalque, is a coffin with a young woman in white. Four great candles in the corners. On the right, almost in front of what we imagine the room to be, there is a single window, high and narrow, from which there can be seen <two distant mountains> between two distant mountains, a narrow strip of sea.

Beside the window, three young ladies keep vigil. The first is seated in front of the window her back against the candle above her on the right. The other two are seated on either side of the window.

It is night, and there is, as it were, a vague remainder of moonlight. FIRST WATCHER – We haven’t heard the time yet. SECOND – We wouldn’t be able to hear it. There is no clock near here. Before long it

should be light. THIRD – No; the horizon is quite dark. FIRST – Wouldn’t you like us to pass the time telling what we used to be? It’s beautiful

and always wrong, of course… SECOND – No; let’s not talk of that. Besides, were we anything? FIRST – Perhaps. I can’t say. But all the same it’s lovely to talk of the past. Hours have

passed and we have just been silent. All I have been doing is looking at the flame of that candle. Sometimes it splutters, then turns yellow and sometimes goes quite faint. <I don’t know what this means. But don’t you think it means s> I don’t know why this should happen. But do we know my sisters, why anything [→ a thing] should happen?

A PAUSE

THE SAME – Let’s talk of the past. – That should be beautiful because it is useless and makes us feel sorry.

SECOND – Let us talk, if you like, about a past we never had… THIRD – No, perhaps we did have it. FIRST – You are only saying words. It’s miserable talking. It’s the wrong way to forget

ourselves. Suppose we walk a little… THIRD – Where? FIRST – Here. From one side to the other. Sometimes this brings dreams. THIRD – Of what? FIRST – I don’t know. Why should I know?

[A PAUSE]8 [2] SECOND – All the country here is very dull. Where I lived before it was much less

dull. In the evening I sewed sitting at the window. The window looked out on the sea and at times there was an island in the distance. Very often I stopped sewing; looked out at the sea and forgot 6 Besides the page number (“1”), there is the figure “3” written and circled on the top margin, perhaps suggesting that this translation would feature as the third element of a bigger project.

7 The document presents the page numbers on the top right margins; we indicate those numbers within brackets, in order to avoid interrupting the narrative flow. 8 This pause is not indicated in the Jennings’s typescript, though it exists in the original by Pessoa; whenever this is the case, we will indicate the pauses within brackets.



about living. I don’t know if I was happy. Just now I shall start to be something I never was… FIRST – Outside of here, I never saw the sea. There, from that window is the only place

where the sea can be seen, and you can see so little of it. Is the sea in other lands very beautiful? SECOND – It is only in other lands that the sea is beautiful. That which we see always

gives us longings for the one we shall never see.

[A PAUSE] FIRST – Weren’t we saying that we were going to talk [↑ tell] about the [↑our] past? SECOND – No, we won’t tell it. THIRD – Why is there no clock in this room? SECOND – I don’t know… But like this, without a clock everything is more remote and

mysterious. The night belongs more to oneself. Who knows if we would be able to talk like this if we knew what time it was?

FIRST – My sister, everything in me is sad. I spend Decembers inside me. I am trying not to look through the window… I know mountains can be seen there in the distance… I was happy once on the other side of the mountains. I was little. I gathered flowers all day and begged before I went to sleep that they wouldn’t take them away. I don’t know what there is of irreparable about this that makes me want to cry. It was far from here that this could have been… When will it become light?

THIRD – What does it matter? The day comes in the same way always, always, always, always…

[A PAUSE]

SECOND – Let us tell stories to one another. I don’t know any stories but that won’t hurt

us. Only living does that. Hardly the fringe of our dresses touches on life. No, don’t get up. That would be a gesture, and every gesture interrupts a dream… For the moment I haven’t any dream whatever, but I like to think I could be having one. Why don’t we speak of the past?

FIRST – We decided not to. The day will break just now and we will be sorry if we do. Dreams go to sleep when it becomes light. The past is nothing but a dream. Besides I don’t know what a dream is. If I look at the present very hard, it seems as though it is already past. What is any thing? How is it passes? Ah, let’s talk, my sisters, talk loudly, all talk together… <Silen> The quietness is beginning to get a body, begins to be a thing I can feel it wrapping me up like a fog… Talk, talk!

SECOND – Why? I look at you both and then I don’t see you. It seems to me that the gaps between us are growing bigger. I have to give up the idea that I can see you through having arrived at seeing you. This warm air is cold inside, in that part that ouches the spirit. I ought to feel now impossible hands going through my hair – it is the gesture with which sirens speak – (Crosses her hands over her knees. Pause). A little while ago when I was [3] not thinking of anything I was thinking about the past.

<THIRD> FIRST – I too must have been thinking about my… THIRD – I didn’t know what I was thinking… about the past of others perhaps… about

the past of marvellous people who never lived… Near my mother’s house ran a little river… why <did it run> should it run, and why shouldn’t run farther away or nearer? Is there any reason for anything to be what it is? A reason for it as true and real as my hands?

SECOND – Hands are not true and real. They are mysteries that inhabit our lives [→ that live with us]. Sometimes when I look at my hands I have a fear of God… There is no wind moving the flames of the candles, yet look, they are moving. They are bending – toward where? What a pity if someone could reply! What are they bowing to? What a pity no one can tell us! I feel a



longing within me to hear the barbaric music that must now be being played in the palaces of other continents. It is always something faraway with me… Perhaps because, when I was a child, I ran after the waves <at low tide> at the seaside [�sea shore]. I lived a whole life in a nutshell among the rocks at low-‐‑tide when the sea appears to have folded its arms on its breasts and gone to sleep like the statue of an angel that nobody looks at any more.

THIRD – Your words remind me of something… SECOND – It is perhaps because they are not true… I hardly know what I am saying… I

repeat them following a voice I do not hear but which still keeps on whispering… But I must really have lived by the seashore. Every time a thing waves, I love it. There are waves in my soul. When I walk, I rock myself like a baby. I would like to walk now. I don’t do it because it is not worthwhile doing anything – above all what I want to do. It is mountains that I am afraid of. It is impossible that they should be so stopped and great. They must have a secret of stone that refuses to recognize what they are. If, leaning out from this window, I could stop seeing mountains, someone would be leaning out from my soul a moment in whom I could feel myself happy…

FIRST – For my part, I love mountains. This side of <them all moun> all mountains life is always ugly. On the other side, where my mother lives, we used to sit in the shade of the tamarinds and talk about going to see other countries. Everything there was long and happy like the song of two birds, one on each side of the road. There were no glades in the forest except in our thoughts. And our dreams had a different calm from that which the trees threw upon the ground. It must have been like this that we lived there, I and I do not know who else besides… Tell me that this was true so that I do not have to burst into tears…

SECOND – I lived among rocks and watched [→ peeped at] the sea. The hem of my dress was cool and salty flapping against my bare legs. I was small and barbarous. Today I am afraid of having been so. Now it seems that I am sleeping. Talk to me about fairies. I never heard from anyone <about> talk about them. The sea was greater by bringing thoughts of them. In life, it is annoying to be small. [5]9 Were you happy, my sister?

FIRST – I commence at this moment to have been so in the past. For the rest, all that was passed in the shadow. The trees lived it more than I. Nothing came about for which I was scarcely hoping. And you, sister, why don’t you talk?

THIRD – I have a horror that in a little while I will have <said> already said what I am going to tell you. My present words, hardly as I say them, will then belong to the past, will remain outside of me, I don’t know where, but rigid and fatal. I speak, and think of this in my throat [→ the words form in my throat] and the words appear to me to be people. I have a greater fear of what I am. I feel in my hand, I don’t know how, the key of an unknown door. And all of me becomes an amulet or monstrance which had become conscious of itself. That is why it terrifies me like going through a dark forest, to go through the mystery of speaking. And, in the end, who knows if I am like this or whether it is this I really feel?

FIRST – It worries a lot to try to know what is felt when we take notice of what is in us! Even living can worry a lot when we notice it. Let’s talk, however, without noticing we exist. [→ Talk on, though, without noticing that you exist.] Weren’t we [→ Weren’t you] going to say what we were.

THIRD – What I was before I can’t remember now. Poor happy thing that I was! I lived among the shadow of branches, and all being is <leaves which> interlacing leaves. When I go out into the sun my shadow is cool. I spent the flight of my days beside fountains [→ springs] <in> where I moistened my tranquil fingers [→ the tips of my tranquil fingers] when I was dreaming of life [→ when life seemed far away as a dream]. Sometimes on the banks [→ shores] [→ margins] of lakes, I leant over and gazed at myself. When I smiled my teeth were mysteries in the water.

9 Note that no page is missing, but the page numbering is incorrect (it goes in the order 1, 2, 3, 5, 4, 5’, 6)—which speaks to the unfinished state of this translation.



They had a smile which was theirs alone <and> independent of <me> mine. It was always without any reason that I smiled. Speak to me of death, of the end of all, so that I may have a reason for remembering…

FIRST – Don’t let us speak of anything – anything. It is colder but why is it that it is colder? It is not good for it to be colder than it is. Why is it that we have to talk? It is better to sing I don’t know why… A song, when people sing at night, is a happy, unfrightened person who suddenly comes into the room and warms it and consoles us. I could sing you a song that we used to sing in my home in the past [→ long ago]. Why don’t you want me to sing it to you?

THIRD – It’s not worth the trouble, my sister… When someone sings I am not myself [→ I can’t be with myself]. I am unable to remember myself. And afterwards all my past becomes different and I find myself crying for a dead life which I never lived. It is always too late to sing just as it is always too late not to sing…

[A PAUSE]

[4] FIRST – It will soon be day. Let us be quiet. That is how life wishes it. Near my house

there was a lake. I used to go and sit by the edge on a tree trunk which fell almost into the water. I used to sit on the end and wet my feet in the water, sticking my toes into it. After that I used to keep on staring at the tips of my toes, but it was not just to see them. I don’t know why but I have the feeling about this lake that it never existed. Remembering it is like not remembering anything. Who knows why I say this and if it was I who lived what I remember?

THIRD10 – By the sea we are sad when we dream. We cannot be what we want to be because what we want to be we want it always to be in the past. When the wave breaks and the foam hisses, it seems there are tiny voices speaking. The foam appears to be cool only to one who judges it to be so. All is many and we know nothing. Do you want me to tell you what I was dreaming of by the sea?

FIRST – You can tell it, my sister; but nothing in us needs you to tell it. If it is beautiful, I am sorry already of having come to hear it. If it is not beautiful, wait… tell it only after having altered.

SECOND – I am going to tell it to you. It is not entirely false because doubtless nothing is entirely false… It ought to have been thus… One day when I was reclining on top of a cold rock and had forgotten that I had mother or father and what had happened in my childhood and other days – on this day I saw in the distance, like something I only thought I saw, the vague passing of a sail. Then it stopped. When I came to myself I saw that already I had this dream of mine… I don’t know where it began. And I never turned to see another sail. None of the sails of ships which sail out here from a port are like that one, even when it is moonlight and the ships pass slowly in the distance.

FIRST – I can see a ship in the distance from the window. It is perhaps the one you saw. SECOND – No, my sister: that one you see must be seeking some port or other. The one I

saw could not be seeking a port… FIRST – Why do you answer me. It could be. I didn’t see any ship from the window. I was

wanting to see one and told you about it to ease my thought. Go on telling us about the dream you had by the sea.

SECOND – I dreamed of a sailor who had been wrecked on a distant island. On this isle there were some hirsute palms, a few only, and some vague birds flying over them. I did not see if any ever rested on them. There the sailor lived after having managed to save himself from the wreck. As he had no means of returning to his country and that every time he thought of it he suffered, he resolved to dream of a country he had never had. He set out to imagine for himself

10 In the original published by Pessoa, these lines were spoken by the “SECOND.”



and pretend that it was his another country, another land with other kinds of landscape and other people, and another way of passing through the streets and leaning out of windows. Every hour he constructed in dream this false fatherland and he [5] never stopped dreaming; by day in the narrow shade of the great palm-‐‑trees, silhouetted fringed with points, on the hot and sandy ground; by night, stretched on my back on the beach, and not noticing the stars.

FIRST – There should have been a tree which spangled my stretched out hands in the shade of a dream like this!

THIRD – Let her speak. Don’t interrupt her. She knows words that the sirens have taught her. I am sleeping so that I can listen to her. Go on telling us, my sister. My heart aches for not being you when you were dreaming by the sea.

SECOND – For years and years, day by day, the sailor built up a continuing dream of his new native land. Every day he put another dream stone on this impossible edifice. Before long he had a country that he had now passed through many times. He remembered thousands of hours passed along its coasts. He knew the colour of the sunsets in a bay in the North, and how soothing it was to enter, at night, with the mind leaning on the murmur of water that the ship opened, in a great port of the South, where happy perhaps he spent his supposed boyhood…

A PAUSE

FIRST – My sister, why <do> are you silent? SECOND – I ought not to say more. Life is peering at us all the time. All time is maternal

for dreams, but it is necessary [→ it is best] not to know it. If I say any more, I begin to [6] separate from myself and hear myself speak. This makes me feel sorry for myself and the heart feels too much. [→ feel my heart too much.] I feel then a tearful wish to take it in my arms and comfort it like a child.

FIRST – Keep on, my sister, keep on telling us. Do not stop recounting to us your dream or take note that days will break. The day never breaks for those who lay their heads on the bosom of dreamed hours. Do not wring your hands. It makes a noise like a furtive serpent. Tell us more of your dream. It is so true that it has no meaning at all. Merely to think of hearing you touches music in my heart.

SECOND – Very well, I will tell you more of it. Even I need to tell you it. While I tell it to you, it is to myself I am telling it too. There are three of us listening. (Suddenly, looking at the coffin) Three, no… I do not know… I don’t know how many…

THIRD – You must not speak like that… Tell you story quickly, tell us again. Don’t talk of how many could be listening. We never know how many things live and see and listen. Go back to your dream. The sailor. What was the sailor dreaming?

SECOND – (more softly, in a very slow voice) First he created the landscapes, then he created the cities; then he created the streets and the alleys, one by one, chiselling them out of the material of his spirit – one by one the streets, ward by ward, even to the stonework of the quays where he created later the ports. The streets [ ]11

11 The typescript ends here—and no other pages were located in the Jennings archive.



II. Twelve pages of O Marinheiro by Fernando Pessoa, published in Orpheu 1 (Lisbon: Monteiro & Cª, 1915: 27-‐‑39); p. 28, being blank (the verse of the title page) is not facsimiled here.

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